Here's a little-known secret: For years, evil scientists have worked in cahoots with music industry executives to try to create the perfect female pop star. After repeated attempts to fuse stolen samples of Mariah Carey's and Sheryl Crow's DNA failed, they decided to stage a talent search on national television, hoping they would find a cute gal with a voice perfectly suited to today's most lucrative rock and R&B clichés.

OK, so that's not the real story behind last year's American Idol winner, Kelly Clarkson. But even if it were, I doubt that Clarkson could have released a debut album that sounds more calculated or less original than Thankful.

That's a shame, because Clarkson is an undeniably gifted young woman. Her voice is full and expressive, with a rich, round tone that, like Carey's, veers effortlessly from breathy cooing to resonant belting.

Music Review

Thankful Kelly Clarkson(out of four)

Clarkson's singing also can take on a sensual raspiness more evocative of blues-influenced rock artists, so that wistful but driving numbers such as Low and Just Missed the Train sound more authoritative than you might expect.

Unfortunately, the material here is often so generic that it could stump the most intuitive interpretive singer. Many of the tracks, which team sometime co-writer Clarkson with some of the top tunesmiths in the business, sound as if they were pretested by focus groups to appeal equally to Top 40, urban and adult-contemporary radio formats.

The breathless, colorless single Miss Independent sounds less like the edgy, strong-but-vulnerable-woman number it purports to be than the Christina Aguilera throwaway it basically is. (Aguilera began working on the song during sessions for her most recent CD but didn't complete it.)

It's a tribute to Clarkson's seemingly genuine wholesomeness and warmth that she manages to tackle such treacle without seeming patently insincere. Even the gooey acknowledgements the singer includes in her liner notes — "I am working with the best management team ever!" she gushes, later telling us, "Anything is possible, no matter who you are or where you come from" — aren't quite as irritating as similar appreciations penned by many of her peers.

If Clarkson wants to enhance that personal believability with creative credibility, she would do well to surround herself with people who are more interested in truly nurturing her talent than making a quick buck from it.